From Peter Laurie
You reported last week that the EU had decided against software patents (16 July, p 27). When Amazon patented “one-click shopping”, hackles were rightly raised. But what about the many inventions that take advantage of cheap, flexible digital processors and are expressed as computer programs?
We are working on a solution to the “cocktail party problem” – the jumble of noise that hearing-aid wearers hear when they are in a room with several people talking. The result of our labours over several years will be a computer program. Is it to be denied patent protection?
To get protection in Europe we will presumably have to re-engineer it as a tiny analogue computer using nano-technology. A small cheer at least for the US patent office, which will protect software.
Abbotsbury, Dorset, US
